xargs command_examples

xargs – build and execute command lines from standard input

find /tmp -name core -type f -print | xargs /bin/rm -f

Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and delete them. Note that this will work incorrectly if there are any filenames containing newlines or spaces.

find /tmp -name core -type f -print0 | xargs -0 /bin/rm -f

Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and delete them, processing filenames in such a way that file or directory names containing spaces or newlines are correctly handled.

find /tmp -depth -name core -type f -delete

Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and delete them, but more efficiently than in the previous example (because we avoid the need to use fork(2) and exec(2) to launch rm and we don’t need the extra xargs process).

cut -d: -f1 < /etc/passwd | sort | xargs echo

Generates a compact listing of all the users on the system.

xargs sh -c 'emacs "$@" < /dev/tty' emacs

Launches the minimum number of copies of Emacs needed, one after the other, to edit the files listed on xargs’ standard input. This example achieves the same effect as BSD’s -o option, but in a more flexible and portable way.